


No You Can't Fence Time, And You Can't Stop Love

by ashleygail



Series: +sometimes goodbye is a second chance [2]
Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Pennywise, Homophobic Slurs, M/M, Period Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 20:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12919344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleygail/pseuds/ashleygail
Summary: How can eighteen years just up and walk away?





	No You Can't Fence Time, And You Can't Stop Love

Derry, Maine, had never been the most accepting of places to live. In its defence, nobody had ever claimed that it was. It was a hard, rough place to live if you were different in even the smallest way. The Losers Club had known this better than anybody else, all of them completely different from the norms and long given up on trying to hide it. They’d always promised each other “graduation and out.” They’d go off to their colleges of choice and never look back at the terrible place.

Some people though, had a slightly different plan. One not openly shared, one known only by two and sure to leave the ground shaking. The beat up white pick up truck Richie Tozier had spent the better part of two years saving up for that only ran out of Richie’s pure determination not to let it die pulled up outside the Kaspbraks’ house at exactly 5:17 on a Tuesday afternoon when Sonia Kaspbrak was known to be down at the pharmacy for her usual appointment.

Eddie stuck a note onto the screen door before running down the front steps and launching himself into the passenger seat.

_I’m sorry but I’ve got to go. <3 Eddie _

Sonia Kaspbrak had been staring at the note for so long that her vision had blurred, and her hands had shaken from holding them up. Where was her son going? Why hadn’t he told her he had plans? What could he possibly be doing?

She’d marched up to his bedroom in hopes of finding some sort of answer only to find herself rooted to the spot the second she threw the door open. Eddie’s bed had been stripped bare, everything from his shelves and walls pulled down. The only thing remaining of her son in the bedroom was the orange bottles of pills and the aspirator sitting on his desk.

That’s when Sonia Kaspbrak placed a call to Derry Sherriff Department.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Kaspbrak,” the deputy told her. “But Eddie is eighteen and all signs point to him having left willingly. We can’t do anything about this. Your son is an adult.”

“My son is fragile!” Sonia screamed, tears burning their way down her face. “He needs his medicine and _he needs his mother! I want to talk to the Sheriff! Why would they send me a deputy! This is an emergency! **My son has been kidnapped!”**_

Deputy Miller looked up at the Kaspbrak’s too clean ceiling as though it might give him strength. Meanwhile, Wentworth Tozier could hear his wife sobbing upstairs as he stared out the kitchen window. As though staring, unblinking, at the overgrown lawn would make his son’s truck pull into in the drive way or his belongings return to his bedroom. How was it that eighteen years could just up and drive away in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday?

He’d given that damn boy everything he’d had. Wentworth knew things hadn’t always been easy in their home, they hadn’t always had enough money and his wife’s drinking had brought a damper down everything. Richie had certainly isolated himself over the past few years, but Wentworth had simply assumed it was the usual teen angst that all boys his age got. God knew he had gone through it- though it certainly hadn’t escalated to running away the day after his eighteenth birthday with all his things in hub of his truck.

“Damn that boy,” Wentworth hissed bitterly. “Damn him straight to hell.”

///

Bill Denbrough could feel all the eyes on him when he walked into church that next Sunday. It did nothing to help the heaviness he’d felt in his heart since Tuesday night when he’d gotten the call from Sonia Kaspbrak. How could Eddie have just run away? Bill had still been trying to wrap his head around it the next morning when he noticed that Richie hadn’t shown up to school either. The Losers had tried to reason that Richie was just taking Eddie leaving harder than anybody else, but the tense feeling in Bill’s stomach seemed to tell him that he knew better than that.

A drive down to Richie’s house after school had been all it required to confirm what he feared. Once Richie didn’t appear at school for the second day in row, the rumours all began to fly and by Thursday evening it was the only thing anybody could talk about anymore. There were so many theories that it made Bill’s head hurt, but there was one that seemed to be on everybody’s lips.

Could it be true? Bill supposed it could be. He wasn’t even sure how much it would surprise him if it were. Eddie and Richie had always been so close, closer than the others, and nobody could deny how Richie flirted with him. But running away to get married? Bill wasn’t sure he could believe that Richie and Eddie would be that good at keeping something like that a secret from him. Though he couldn’t deny that they’d kept the fact that they were running away the moment Richie turned eighteen, so Bill depends that anything was possible.

Bill ignored the way the eyes followed him as he moved. He’d already gotten the third degree from Mrs Kaspbrak- all the Losers had, and all of them had given the same answers of having known nothing about it at all. They all knew what the whole town thought, what they were all saying. They could hear the whispers, it was impossible not to.

“As I’m sure you’re all aware,” the priest began from the front of the pews once the church go’ers had been seated. “We’re missing a long-time member of our community here today.” The whole church heard Sonia Kaspbrak’s loud choking sob as it echoed throughout the pews. Bill squeezed his eyes shut and tried to calm his stomach, so he didn’t end up throwing up in the middle of Sunday service.

“Edward Kaspbrak was a good Christian boy,” the minister continued as Mrs Kaspbrak’s sobs threatened to overpower his voice. “Never missed a service, never missed a Bible study. Edward Kaspbrak was corrupted by an evil sin that is slowly making its way through this world. We lose so many of our good citizens to this sickness, they’re taken off and they lose the good people they once were.”

Bill’s hands were shaking as the minister continued to drone on. He clenched his fists shut and tried his hardest to drown out the preaching. Instead he found his thoughts wandering to Eddie and Richie. Of Richie snapping Eddie’s arm back into place after Henry Bowers had broken it in seventh grade and of the time Eddie threw himself into a group of Henry’s old gang when Richie’s mouth ran too wild and the boy nearly got himself killed… but also of smaller things, of Richie’s arm draping around Eddie while they walked or how Eddie would be sitting up against Richie’s or even in Richie’s lap during movie night, or how nobody ever questioned whether Eddie would get shot gun in Richie’s truck while everybody laughed as the two fought over the music. Bill’s heart clenched his chest and tears burned his eyes. Those fucking assholes… his best friends.

“Billy?” Georgie was suddenly pulling on the sleeve of Bill’s blazer. “Bill? Did Richie do something bad to Eddie? Did he make him sick?”

Bill nearly gave himself whip lash turning to look at Georgie so quickly. His eleven-year-old brother looked heart broken, his brown eyes glossy with tears and bottom lip jutted out just slightly. The hurt in Bill’s chest quickly boiled into anger.

“N-n-no.” Bill said firmly but quietly. “Richie d-di-di-idn’t d-d-d-d-do anything to Eddie. They didn’t do any-anything wrong. They are-aren’t sick, okay?”

“Okay,” Georgie replied, eyes downcast and bottom lip trembling. Bill managed to hear the minister saying “that Tozier boy” before he launched himself out of his seat. Hands and jaws clenched tightly, he stormed out from the pews. Bill Denbrough walked out that church without looking back, pretending he couldn’t hear the whispers that followed him.

///

Beverly Marsh sat behind the desk at the local downtown salon. Her aunt had gotten a job there once when she had moved to Derry after Bev’s father died. Her aunt was beyond talented and Bev knew she deserved to work at big time salons in huge cities and sometimes the feeling of guilt riddled Bev until she couldn’t sleep.

“I hear they ran off to Las Vegas to get married,” some woman who came in a got her hair permed every six months like clock work rattled on. “Poor Sonia, she tried so hard with that boy. I couldn’t imagine my son ending up like that.”

“I feel worse for Margaret and Wentworth,” the ‘just a little off the sides’ every two weeks woman said haughtily. “Why do you think Sonia tried so hard with Edward? She had to have _known,_ how could she not have? Everybody must have known, he had the look of it. Richard, though? I never would’ve guessed Richard was one.”

Bev inhaled deeply and squeezed her eyes shut. Would this never stop? It had been almost two weeks since Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak had spilt town without warning or a single goodbye. Bev couldn’t pretend she hadn’t been pissed when she’d gotten the news, and continued to be pissed for maybe days afterwards. It wasn’t until she the gossip started swirling about Bill walking out of church that she realized that Eddie and Richie weren’t entirely the people she should be mad at. She didn’t know about the rest of the Losers, but Beverly had always sort of known that there was something between Eddie and Richie. She just hadn’t known that they had known it too. As angry as she’d been that her friends had organized this brilliantly sneaky plan and pulled it off flawlessly without telling her, she knew that this might be the only way for them. They couldn’t ever be who they really were in Derry.

“You’re so right, Wendy,” the man who comes in to get his barely-there-hair-cut once a month said sadly. “The Tozier boy never struck me as the type to be into that. Kaspbrak had no real father figure in his life, it can’t come as any surprise he’s a little bit of a fairy. It’s unfortunate he had such an influence of Tozier, he had such potential to be somebody great.”

That was almost too much for Bev. Since fucking when did the adults of Derry ever have anything good to say about Richie Tozier? Store owners followed him around as though he was stealing (he never was), fathers warned their daughters to stay away (clearly, they didn’t need to worry) and teachers would kick him out as class for being disruptive and when he’d pass every test with flying colours they’d accuse him of cheating (he never did). Richie Tozier was never a source of pride for the people of Derry but it seemed they’d gotten bored of villainizing him in the corruption of sweet, innocent Eddie Kaspbrak so they needed to change up their story to keep themselves entertained.

It boiled Beverly’s goddamn blood.

“You know,” Bev said loudly from behind the desk. “It’s fucking free to mind your own business and keep your nasty mouths shut. It’s not that hard.”

The shop fell silent with scandal as Bev smiled down at the desk. Maybe she’d be asked to leave, and maybe her aunt would be pissed at her for she couldn’t be bothered to care for a single second. Beverly Marsh had stood up for her gone friends the only way that she could.

///

Mike Hanlon had started working at the public library as a student page during his senior year and it was a nice escape from the world around them. Nobody bothered Mike in the library. He’d never had a problem before today.

There were a group of boys sitting in the back, looking over their book before exams. The public high school kids coming in for exam prep made Mike a little sad, because of he thought of the things Richie and Eddie had left behind when they’d run. They weren’t going to graduate with their friends, Mike didn’t know if they were ever finish high school at all.

Mike tuned into the conversation of the boys sitting at the table closest to his desk without giving it any thought. “… I saw good riddance,” one of them said spitefully. “Who needs that kind of shit around?”

Mike frowned. Spending years in the presence of The Losers Club had numbed him pretty much completely to the sound of cursing but he still wasn’t fond of it in the library. His slight irritation only grew as he heard more.

“Yeah. Who knows who else they could corrupt? I heard that stuttering kid is one too. He some freak out in Church when Father James was talking about Kaspbrak.”

Mike closed his book harshly on the desk and closed his eyes for a minute. He counted to twenty in his head, then counted to thirty. The boys were still talking.

“Yeah don’t need any fucking fagg-”

“Okay, you need to leave.” Mike pushed himself up from the desk. The three teenage boys whipped around and looked at him with wide eyes. “We don’t tolerate that sort of language in a public building. I need you to leave. Have those conversations somewhere else.”

The middle boy looked as though he was ready to fight him, but his friend grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t.” The kid said. “He’s one of those Losers. I heard they’re fucking fairies.”

Mike Hanlon watched them leave, chest heaving with some burning pressure he couldn’t release.

///

Stanley Uris held the envelope in his hands as he walked towards the other Losers outside of the high school’s auditorium. His suit was uncomfortable, nearly a year old and too small. He hadn’t bothered buying something new for graduation, another suit he wouldn’t need to wear again. His nerves were jumping a mile a minute and it had nothing to do with the ceremony he was going to attend within the hour.

Richie and Eddie had been gone almost two months, and the town still wasn’t over it. People still whispered, people still stared. After a few outbursts, people started avoiding saying anything in the presence of the Losers. It got easier to ignore.

Stan knew he was about to rip open wounds that were yet to fully heal. He wouldn’t be completely surprised if he walked away from today friendless.

“I have to show you guys something,” Stan said as soon as he reached them. “And you’re going to be mad, but I need you to promise hear me out before you say anything.”

The rest of them look at each other before looking at Stan. Stan bit down on his lip and then sighed.

“I knew that Richie and Eddie were going to run away,” Stan said in one quick breath. Silence rang out for a moment before-

“You motherfuck-“ Bev shirked before Ben hushed her quickly.

“We promised to hear him out,” Ben said. “Let him talk.”

“Richie told me about a week before they were going to leave,” Stan said. “They needed help sneaking Eddie’s stuff out of his room, they didn’t want his mom to see them taking it and Richie didn’t want his parents to sober up and see it. I let them keep stuff above my garage. They came and picked it up before they left. They made me a promise. They kept it.”

Stan held the envelope out. Bill- ever the leader- reached out and took it. He opened it to a show a picture of Richie and Eddie, wraps thrown around each other. They were wearing rich looking suits and Richie was kissing Eddie’s cheek. “They got married. In Vegas,” Stan said, inches of fond slipping into his nervous voice. “I mean, not really married since the aren’t actually allowed but there was a ceremony and- the letter says everything.”

Bill looked up from the note, too quickly to have read it, with tears in his eyes. “Wh-wh-wh-“

“Why did they tell you?” Bev said for him, her cheeks burning while she refused to meet Stan’s gaze. Stan bit his bottom lip and shrugged.

“Richie and I have been best friends since kindergarten. We were each other’s best friends,” Stan said meekly. “Before Eddie, before Bill, before any of you guys.  I knew that Richie and Eddie were together- they never told me!” He said quickly when Bev launched her mouth open again. “I pretty much told Richie he was in love with Eddie, I could just tell. There wasn’t any hiding it after that really. Maybe that’s why they chose me, because they wouldn’t have to explain as much. I don’t know. But they told me not to tell, not right away, said that I should give it time before I told you guys-“

“I knew Eddie and Richie were dating, too,” Ben blurt out suddenly. “Eddie… Eddie told me when he liked Richie. He wanted some relationship advice, I guess. He seemed to think I was some big romantic.”

“You are, though,” Bev said quietly. Ben flushed.

“Eddie was so excited when Richie finally kissed him, and they got together, he told me that next night. He was so happy,” Ben smiled softly to himself. “I’m not mad at you, Stan. We all kept secrets.”

“I di-di-didn’t even kn-know they were guh-gay,” Bill stuttered in frustration. The rest of the Losers all shot him withering looks.

“In the letter Richie said-“ Stan clearly his throat. “He said we should come see them. After graduation, go on a roadtrip. Visit them. They miss us as much as we miss them.”

“Those fucking assholes better apologize when we go,” Bev said bitterly but she was smiling. “I barely made it through senior year without my smoking buddy.”

“I can’t believe they got married and didn’t invite us!”

“Ed-Ed-Eddie better ruh-ruh-realized how sc-screwed I was with-without his sc-sc-science notes.”

The five Losers wrapped their arms around each other, walking into the auditorium while laughing and making their plans.

 

 


End file.
